‘Oldboy’ and the Art of Preparing Your Audience for the Unexpected

I TRY TO GO TO MOVIES basking in complete ignorance. Unless I’ve seen the previews of coming attractions, I know nothing. I don’t look at reviews, I don’t Google, I avoid chatter on what I’m about to see. As much as possible, I like to come into a theater fresh, with no expectations. So when a friend convinced me to go to a late-night screening of a twentieth-anniversary rerelease of Oldboy (2003), I took her up on it solely because she has great taste in movies. I didn’t even know it was Korean. As we sat down in our plush, cushy movie seats, my friend said, “Buckle up, Zandy.”

Before the movie began, there was a special introduction by Park Chan-wook, the co-writer/director, to mark its anniversary. Park had this to say to the audience:

“I would like to give some advice to those who are watching Oldboy. First, there are scenes of extreme violence. Brace yourselves. The movie grapples with themes such as revenge, betrayal and sadness. There’s no avoiding any of this. Second, be prepared for extreme nudity, but not the kind of nudity you’d expect. Things are not always as they seem. There are many funny and ironic moments in this film. Don’t hesitate to laugh. If there are people who love octopi, this film may not be for you. Whether you have seen Oldboy before or if this is your first time watching it, I hope you all enjoy the film.”

How does Park Chan-wook’s prescreen trigger warning compare to this screenshot that The Bulwark’s Sonny Bunch posted on Twitter?

Well, the latter is asinine. It insults the audience’s intelligence and perhaps if you’re so easily perturbed, you should avoid horror movies altogether. It is perfunctory and pro forma, neither informing the audience of what’s to come nor preparing them for the context of what they’re about to see. This sort of infantilization feels like something a corporate drone dreamed up somewhere in the bowels of Amazon to make it look as though they’re proactively trying to avoid needless controversy on social media. Contrast that to Park’s caveat, which ultimately increased and deepened my appreciation for and admiration of Oldboy.

Because it was my first time seeing Oldboy and I knew nothing, I laughed at his warning, thinking this avuncular gentleman in his sixties with a kind, intelligent face was being satirical. “Extreme nudity”? “Octopi death”?? How random. Maybe this is a comedy? He told us to laugh, after all.

But when I witnessed a wild, unkempt, and desperate Oh Dae-su (Choi Min-sik) say to the angelic-looking sushi chef, Mi-do (Kang Hye-jeong), “I said I want to eat something alive,” and then proceed to devour a large, wriggling, very much living octopus, I realized, “Oh my god. The director was being literal!” Immediately afterwards, my perception of the movie shifted in a way that was shocking, even vertiginous. And amazingly, Oldboy continued to stun and disquiet, one-upping itself until the cataclysmic penultimate scene when Lee Woo-jin (Yoo Ji-tae) reveals Dae-su has unwittingly taken his own daughter as his lover, Dae-su then cuts off his own tongue, and, satiated in his vengeance, Woo-jin shoots himself in the head.

But something else that Park Chan-wook said was also true: Oldboy IS funny. When Oh Dae-su finds an extra chopstick with his daily prison rations, the one he uses as a tool to try to escape his fifteen-year confinement, he says, “All I could think about in that moment was the guy in the next room was eating with only one chopstick.” The ease with which the movie slid from humor to horror is unsettling, rolling beneath me like an earthquake. It is both playful and raw: about love and affection but also incest, retribution, and violence. A film about a flawed, unremarkable man who because of circumstances beyond his control transforms over fifteen years into a beast whose sole purpose is his epic quest of revenge. As I left the movie late at night, I wasn’t even sure I liked it. It was brutal and unforgiving, and it used the women in the film more as plot devices and symbols than as full-fledged human beings. But after I found my car in the nearly empty parking lot and drove home on deserted streets, I felt like I was in a different state than when I entered the theater.

It was very similar to what I felt after my first time seeing Mulholland Drive: suddenly everything around me seemed sinister. None of us was due a happy ending. A dark, mysterious force that controlled our collective destinies was lurking in the shadows. Both movies infected me, and the more I thought about them, the more they deepened and revealed their brilliance and audaciousness. I had a hard time sleeping. Underneath the brutality, there was a deceptive delicacy and a grace to both Park Chan-wook’s and David Lynch’s direction. These writer-directors have a similar deep understanding of humanity and our angelic and demonic sides: our lyricism and our ugliness, our curiosity and our brittleness, our strength and our fragility. And both men use humor in an off-kilter way to destabilize their audience and keep them on their toes. Their cameras thrive in the darkness.

In retrospect, I saw Park Chan-wook’s intro as less of a warning and more of a compassionate preparation for Oldboy. Rather than the movie being violent and prurient to shock (which I found Spike Lee’s 2013 remake to be), Park lets us know that the brutality is for a grander purpose: to dissociate the viewers from our normal lives outside the theater and take us to a heightened, more mythic and animalistic world. The extreme violence and the ultimate taboo of incest, along with the saturated, stylized cinematography, make the story biblical, so that it stands for something awesome: the savagery that lies underneath our manufactured, daily civility. How gossip—something we all do—can curse a man for life. As Oh Dea-su’s tormenter says, “Be it a rock or a grain of sand, in water they sink the same.” The ordinary can have extraordinary consequences. I’m glad Park Chan-wook primed me for his movie. After my initial bewilderment, I woke up the next morning remembering what he said and realized that it actually was an act of generosity and empathy. Things are not always as they seem.

Ryan Gosling: A Professional

MY MOM BELIEVED THE HIGHEST COMPLIMENT she could give when she saw me onstage or on film was to call me “professional.” Granted, she was British and not given to florid praise, but her definition of professional didn’t mean “competent.” It meant you were a worker. You knew your lines, you knew your marks, you showed up on time, you were respectful to your director, writer, cast, and crew, and you were tirelessly devoted to your craft. So when you performed in front of an audience, you made all that effort look effortless.

When I watch Ryan Gosling, that’s what I see: a professional.

He began his career in show business at age 12 as a dancer. Dancers have to rehearse laboriously in order to memorize the choreography and not hurt themselves or their partners, but in performance they have to let all the work go and feel the emotion flow through their body. Ryan Gosling inhabits his roles as if he were dancing, not acting. There’s a freedom and grace to him that I know comes from intense study and discipline, but I cannot see that work at all on screen.

“Crazy Stupid Love”

He is serious about his rehearsal process. Gosling studied piano three hours a day for three months in preparation to play a jazz pianist in La La Land (2016). He and Michelle Williams lived together in Pennsylvania on a tight household budget filming Blue Valentine (2010) so they could authentically play a young, struggling couple. During the filming of Drive (2011), Gosling took apart and then put back together the 1973 Chevy Malibu he drove in the movie. He got his broker’s license before filming The Big Short (2015). For The Believer (2001), Mormon-raised Gosling studied Hebrew and the Torah for months in order to play an Orthodox Jew who rejected his faith and became a Nazi. Yet despite this level of intensity, there are no stories about him of prima donna behavior during filming. He has his process but is never showy or demanding. None of his performances scream, “Look at me! Look at how hard I’m working! I’m IMPRESSIVE, aren’t I? Where’s my Oscar?” There is no fanfare, no drama, no attention-seeking, and no toxic on-set, “genius-at-work” behavior. He puts his head down, studies, collaborates, and does his job.

Nowhere is that more obvious than in his comedic roles, particularly The Nice Guys (2016). His “buddy-buddy” cop dynamic with Russell Crowe is easy and delightful. Their relaxed repartee is inspired, rivaling Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin’s in Midnight Run. They are two masters of their craft, collaborating generously and enjoying the hell out of each other, working off their opposing rhythms to perfection. Gosling is light and loose, and Crowe is muscular and heavy—a greyhound accidentally paired with a grizzly bear. Gosling plays self-destructive, alcoholic Holland March with breezy, nihilistic irony. He spends most of the movie hurting himself or getting hurt but miraculously not dying, his alcoholism literally and figuratively filling his body with liquid looseness that makes him virtually indestructible. Crowe’s Jackson Healy, even though he beats up people for a living, is more ethical, trudging through his violent assignments with heavy, grim determination. Their diametrically opposed physicality but similarly bleak outlook on life are what give The Nice Guys its congenial and gratifying flow. Together, they perform a kind of jazz-tinged funk, much like the music of Earth, Wind & Fire, which is featured prominently in the movie.

Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe in “The Nice Guys”

Gosling even brings a sense of humor to his most intensely dramatic roles. In Blue Valentine’s early courtship scenes, Dean makes Cindy (Michelle Williams) dance while he accompanies her on his ukulele and sings “You Always Hurt the One You Love” in a goofy Elvis voice, showing the playful nature that originally attracted her to him. In Half Nelson (2006), a movie about a teacher ravaged by a self-destructive drug addiction, Gosling makes sure we see the devotion and respect he has for his inner-city students by the delicate way he teases and relates to them, joking around in class and gently mocking himself as their designated white authority figure. Even in a sentimental movie like The Notebook (2004)—at which, despite my best efforts, I did weep like a baby—Gosling imbues his character, Noah, with humor and pathos that in a lesser actor’s hands could cross the line into hokum. He and Rachel McAdams have such beautiful, high-spirited chemistry that they lift the movie far above treacly, tearjerker status and make it into something with earned emotional heft.

“Half Nelson”

It’s rare that an actor who is as good-looking as Ryan Gosling has such humility. Despite the effort he obviously puts into maintaining his Apollonian physique, there is no vanity to him. In Blue Valentine, he morphs from an optimistic, Brooklyn free spirit into a lost alcoholic with thinning hair and a slight paunch. In Lars and the Real Girl (2007), he taps into Lars’s trauma from his mother’s death and his father’s subsequent emotional abandonment, becoming a young man who despite being nice-looking, hardly speaks, is full of ticks, and who hides his body in layers of clothes so nobody, particularly non-rubber women, will touch him. In Half Nelson, he loses all the brawn he had in The Notebook to play a skinny, pale addict. He even makes fun of his physical perfection and heartthrob status in Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011), when Emma Stone’s character, on her quest to be seduced by “the hot guy that hit on me at the bar,” tells him to take off his shirt and he squirms as she ogles him: “Seriously?? It’s like you’re photoshopped!”

WHICH BRINGS US to Gosling as “Ken” in the mega-hit Barbie. For my money (sorry fellow feminists), Ken is the fount of humor in this cultural phenomenon. Through Gosling’s grace, charm, and comedic gifts, he manages to transform an almost two-dimensional character into the heartbeat of the movie. He is willing to be self-deprecating and use his physical perfection to play a doll whose sole concern is surface looks, and is plagued by insecurity when he doesn’t get the attention and adoration he thinks he deserves. He is a cautionary tale for dim, aggrieved men who believe they are owed respect by their mere existence. And he plays this entitled incel himbo to the hilt and wrings every drop of humor he can out of the part. In this female-dominated, explicitly feminist (some might say didactic, but that’s for another article) movie, he is happy to make himself the butt of the joke. And although he is game to play second-fiddle to Margot Robbie, America Ferrara, and of course, the director, Greta Gerwig, he has such verve and generosity of spirit that he ends up being the movie’s most memorable character.

“Barbie”

His compelling choice of projects, his willingness to invest himself fully, his lack of ego, his listening ability, his sense of humor, his work ethic, and his interest in, above all, serving the script dramaturgically (tip of the hat to Jeremy Strong), are what set Ryan Gosling apart from most of his fellow male actors. For thirty years, through intense discipline, he has focused on being an actor rather than being a movie star, which is why he can meld and disappear into whatever role he takes on. The range of his talent is extraordinary. And, like a true pro, he makes it all look so easy.

‘Risky Business’ Forty Years Later: The Movie That Made Tom Cruise "Tom Cruise."

I WAS OBSESSED WITH RISKY BUSINESS in the summer of 1983; I even bought a pair of Ray-Bans after my third viewing. Rewatching it forty years later, however, I’m struck by what a clever, dark, strange, and quietly subversive movie it is, a cut above other sex comedies of that era. And I found it fascinating to revisit Tom Cruise at the beginning of his career: to see the intimations of his meteoric rise to superstar status, yes, but also to see him acting a role I’m not sure he’d sign up for now.

Cruise plays Joel Goodsen, a regular, all-American high school senior from a wealthy Chicago suburb. He is neither a standout student nor a rebellious misfit. He is the dutiful, only son to his chilly and exacting parents. They expect him to excel, matriculate at an Ivy (preferably Princeton, where Joel’s dad is an alumnus), get a job in finance, marry an acceptable woman, and eventually become exactly like them. His life is mapped out for him.

My favorite Tom Cruise performances have been in roles where he had directors whom he admired and submitted to—auteurs like Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese, Barry Levinson, Cameron Crowe, and Paul Thomas Anderson. With these directors, he relaxed his tight grip on his image and allowed them to take him on a dark journey of self-discovery. As wonderfully entertaining and technically impressive as Tom Cruise’s action-adventure movies are, those parts aren’t exactly complex character studies. Risky Business was Cruise’s first starring role in that brief period before he became “Tom Cruise.” And Paul Brickman, its writer and director, pushed him into tricky emotional territory. He brings out both Cruise’s vulnerability and maybe unearths a bit of his innate insanity. He pushes him to lose control. He gets Tom Cruise to have sex on a train and lip sync and dance with abandon in his tighty-whities, for God’s sake. (And manically bounce up and down on his parents’ overstuffed couch, foreshadowing his meltdown on Oprah twenty-two years later.)

rehearsing for his future Oprah Winfrey interview

Cruise plays Joel as a distinctly average kid. He is good-looking, but has no idea how to take advantage of it. He has recurring dreams where potential sexual encounters with imaginary girls are thwarted by missed tests, parental disappointment, and public embarrassment. He joins the school’s Future Enterprisers club to please his father and to look good on paper for college applications even though he struggles to find a product he has any passion for and can market successfully. He has a goofy laugh, he walks stiffly, and awkwardly stuffs his hands in his pockets. Joel isn’t comfortable in his own skin and doesn’t have a clue who he is or who he wants to be.

The current, carefully curated Tom Cruise would never take on a movie whose most quoted line is, “Sometimes you gotta say, ‘What the fuck?’” Watching Risky Business back when I was a teenager, I was thrilled by its sensuality. However, now I realize it is less about sex and more about the seductive, dark allure of capitalism, made flesh in the form of Lana (a perfectly calibrated and mysterious Rebecca De Mornay), a call girl Joel hires for the night. Lana deliberately makes herself into a symbol. We don’t know her last name, we barely know a thing about her private life, which is the way she wants to keep it. She wakes Joel up from a deep sleep and they have sex in the middle of a sudden windstorm. Is she real or just another one of his fantasies? As Jackie, the transgender prostitute Joel’s friend originally hired for him says of Lana, “It’s what you want. It’s what every boy off the Lake wants.” She looks like the girl next door, if the girl next door were a sex doll.

But she’s also a brilliant businessperson. Lana convinces Joel to turn his parents’ house into a one-night brothel servicing the other sad, little rich boys from Glencoe. Out of financial desperation, Joel agrees, but he takes to the part of a pimp with a heart of gold like a duck to the waters of Lake Michigan. He’s actually great at it. Lana has unearthed the entrepreneurial spirit he’d been missing in the classroom. In one weekend, Joel metamorphizes from a law-abiding, “good” son into a stone-cold movie star, sunglasses covering his eyes and thousands of dollars in his pocket.

Risky Business dabbles in the tropes of the classic 1980s teenage sex comedy, but it is far more complex, nuanced, and slippery in its morals and in its tone. It has more in common with The Graduate than Porky’s. Most of the movie takes place at night and the cinematography reflects that darkness. The haunting soundtrack by Tangerine Dream adds a vaguely ominous, moody undercurrent. When Joel is waiting for Jackie and then Lana to arrive at his house, Brickman amps up the tension so high, we almost feel like we’re watching a horror movie. None of Joel’s buddies is particularly appealing or good friends to him. And his parents are rigid and unloving. His mom seems to care more about her Steuben glass egg than her son. Joel is very much on his own until Lana comes into his life.

Unlike the female roles in most 1980s comedies, Lana is never a passive figure there to serve the male lead. She may not have the advantages and education Joel has, but she’s miles ahead of him in every respect except wealth. When Joel unintentionally condescends toward her in an effort to get to know her better, Lana lets him know he’s a hypocrite for judging her and what she does to survive when, after all, he’s benefiting from it and lives off his parents’ largesse. And when it suits her, Lana lets Joel believe he’s her knight in shining armor, but she is always running the show. And even though she robs him blind, Joel ends up respecting Lana’s hustle and drive. She’s made “Sometimes you gotta say, ‘What the fuck?’” come to life for him.

Joel gets into Princeton not because of his grades or his legacy advantages, but because the admissions officer has had the time of his life at Lana and Joel’s pop-up brothel. While other students at the Future Enterprisers Club are presenting their paper towel holders and decorative planters that earned them $800 in sales, Lana has shown Joel how to make $8,000 in one night ($25,000 in 2023 dollars). In the penultimate scene, Lana and Joel have dinner together in a tony restaurant downtown, entirely populated—except for them—by rich, old, white men. When Joel asks her if what they had was just a setup, she tells him no, and then asks, “You don’t trust me, do you?” He doesn’t answer.

The last scene is them walking in the dark by the lake. Lana is dressed in a prim, white dress with a bow tied around her neck. Except she’s braless and her breasts are clearly visible under the dress. Joel doesn’t care. He not only accepts her, he revels in her daring. No judgments this time. They are on equal footing. She has given him confidence and purpose in a way his sheltered life at home and at school never could have accomplished. Will their romance continue? We don’t know, but for right now they both have profited from their pragmatic and symbiotic relationship. What an elegantly cynical ending.

Poker Face takes viewers back to the 1970s, temperamentally, every Thursday.

My dad liked company on the couch while he watched his favorite television shows, so at a very early age I was watching Kojak, The Rockford Files, and, if we were lucky, Columbo. In fact, my dad got in trouble with my first grade teacher, Miss Roberts, when she found out the reason I was falling asleep on my school desk was because I was staying up until 11 p.m. to watch these rather-inappropriate-for-a-six-year-old TV shows with my father. Naturally, he charmed his way out of the doghouse, and he and Miss Roberts ended up becoming friends.

The point of this story is that those wonderful ’70s procedurals—with their charismatic, ironical lead actors, and their brilliant guest stars and masterful writing and direction—bathe me in a warm, nostalgic glow. And as I viewed the first six episodes of Poker Face(streaming on Peacock), I experienced the same feelings of delight and enchantment.

I am certainly not the first to say how much Poker Face reminds me of Columbo. Both shows spend the first third of their episodes without their leads, showing the audience exactly who the murderer is and how they did it; a “howcatchem” rather than a “whodunit.” When Peter Falk, as the titular lead of Columbo, and Natasha Lyonne, as Charlie Cale in Poker Face, finally do appear, they are disheveled and distracted, lulling the suspects into a false sense of complacency. All the criminals think they’re different and special and can outsmart Columbo and Charlie, but their hubris is always their fatal flaw. And it’s a pleasure to watch the clever cat-and-mouse game play out every time.

Also similar to ’70s procedurals is the stellar quality of Poker Face’s guest stars: Adrian Brody, Benjamin Bratt, Judith Light, S. Epatha Merkerson, Ellen Barkin, Tim Blake Nelson, Tim Meadows and Chloé Sevigny, just to name a few. I made sure I knew nothing about each episode before I saw them, so I let out a joyful, surprised yelp as these actors popped up on screen, each one doing a spectacular star turn. Even though Natasha Lyonne is both the star and one of the producers (along with creator, Rian Johnson), she is magnanimous about letting her guest stars shine in their own right. Her chemistry with them, as well as with the wonderful lesser-known actors who populate each episode, is authentic and dazzling.

Even the graphics in the beginning credits and the jangly theme music for Poker Face are evocative of ’70s murder-of-the-week shows. As is the direction. The choice to let the action in the beginning of the episodes take its time to play out in long shots, with a relaxed pace, gives the audience a chance to savor the ambience, the setting and the subtle shift in various characters’ thoughts. This is particularly true in the appropriately titled episode, “The Stall.”

The premiere episode (“Dead Man’s Hand”) establishes why Charlie is on the run, and why in each subsequent episode Charlie takes low-level jobs in various small, lonely towns across America. Aside from the same pursuer trailing Charlie, so far each episode is a discrete story unto itself, and the audience could watch them in any order. Unlike virtually every other modern series, character development isn’t as important as the plot. Even though Charlie is the star, she is often not the focal point. In “Exit Stage Death,” she isn’t even the person who solves the murder. Poker Face is less about its lead, and more about the weirdos she meets along the way.

Which is not to say that Charlie is a nondescript wallflower. Natasha Lyonne crafts a unique, strong-willed, brave, and indelible character. Unlike Lieutenant Columbo, Charlie has no power. She has no authority and no weapons to protect herself other than her preternatural ability to know when people are lying. Also unlike Columbo, she has no artifice. She’s not pretending to be messy and discombobulated, she just is. She drinks too much, she smokes, she’s flustered, she’s a misfit. She’s friendly but doesn’t stick around anywhere long enough to make friends. She calls the murderers on their lies as soon as she hears them, and spends the rest of the episode doggedly determined to make sure the criminals are brought to justice. There is no, “Oh, just one more thing…” turnaround. With Charlie, as soon as she hears the killers lying, she blurts out, “BULLSHIT!” Which puts her in significantly more danger than Columbo, as many of the murderers then want to get rid of Charlie, as well. If Charlie weren’t such a decent person, she’d mind her own business and ignore the injustice of relative strangers dropping like flies around her. Then she’d only have to worry about one person, Cliff LeGrand (Benjamin Bratt), a hired assassin tracking her down and trying to kill her. No biggie.

Another pleasure of Poker Face is its lightness of spirit. Other than her life being in constant peril, Charlie Cale is not an unhappy person. She has no money, but she has style and moxie. Despite the hard knocks fate has thrown her way, she maintains an indomitable sense of humor and has an ironic, adaptable, and unexpectedly upbeat perspective. She seems to enjoy her life and her adventures meeting other eccentrics while she criss-crosses the country. Which feels like an enormous relief when seemingly every other TV show is about its protagonists’ relentless, heavy Sturm und Drang.

The writing is clever, funny, and always surprising. Every time I think I know where the plot or a new character is heading, I am almost always wrong. I have laughed out loud, watching all by myself, several times. If you’ve seen the episode with the MAGA dog, you know what I mean. The highly saturated colors in its cinematography add literal and figurative brightness to the show.

There is plenty of darkness in Poker Face. I mean, it’s a show about murder, after all. But there is also the sheer delight of watching superlative, beloved actors as various ne’er-do-wells strut their stuff with finesse in their guest-starring roles. Judith Light and Adrian Brody, for example, are absolute wonders.

Poker Face is both lighthearted and complex. The right balance of sun and shadow: enough to make you think, but not enough to drag you down. And I now look forward to Thursdays—when Peacock releases new episodes—the same way I looked forward to watching those ’70s murder-of-the-week shows with my dad as appointment TV those many years ago. God, I’m old.

Ubu Roy

Logan Roy’s fatal heart attack in the third episode of Succession’s fourth and final season, is a shocking feat of daring by its creator, Jesse Armstrong. It’s like mounting a production of King Lear where Lear dies one third of the way through the play.  And yet it's completely in keeping with the show’s ability to defy its audience’s expectations. And like Logan Roy’s children, we the viewers are now left stunned, confused and wondering what we will do without him.

From the very beginning of the series, Armstrong explicitly shows that Logan Roy isn’t well. The first episode has him disoriented, wandering in the dark of his opulent brownstone and pissing in his walk-in closet, confusing it with his toilet. Later in that episode, he has a stroke in his helicopter. The title, “Succession,” makes it clear that the entire show is about all of Logan Roy’s friends and family desperately (but enthusiastically) positioning themselves to inherit his legacy (and money) after he dies. And yet, when he finally does, we are completely bereft and shocked, and like Roman, almost in denial. 

As in real life, each child and loved-one—and “loved-one” is doing a lot of heavy lifting as a descriptor—has a singular variation on grief. Shiv is devastated by guilt that her last conversation with her father the night before was bitter and vengeful. Kendall’s reaction is more stoic, as he gains gravitas and finally becomes the elder statesman of the family. Connor is resigned: he never had his father’s love to begin with, so he really had nothing left to lose. And Roman is in complete disbelief: how is it possible that his Übermensch dad could cease to exist? And earlier that day, Logan forced Roman to fire maybe his only friend, Gerri, in a signature “divide and conquer” strategy to break up potentially perilous alliances, and as a way of testing Roman’s absolute devotion to him. Becauset he gave into his father’s demand, Roman has alienated Gerri irreparably and has no true shoulder to cry on. He is completely emotionally adrift.

Tom is genuinely crestfallen and shows sincere compassion for his estranged wife, but everyone else on the plane with Logan when he died is all business immediately afterward, trying to spin his death to save their asses. 

Except for Logan’s paramour, Kerry, who reacts with inappropriate giggles at his death, so much so that Karl calls her “Chuckles the Clown,” a reference to the famous Mary Tyler Moore Show episode, “Chuckles Bites the Dust.” It’s her manic response to the whole world she has ruthlessly constructed through her alliance with Logan against his kids that she now realizes was just a house of cards that cannot support her weight. Humpty Dumpty will have a great fall.

Both Logan’s stroke and his eventual heart attack are bookended by birthdays: the first episode, “The Celebration,” takes place on his eightieth birthday, and his death happens on Connor’s wedding (the title of the episode) day, the day after Logan’s eighty-fourth birthday. As with every party and wedding that the Roys attend and throw, joy and togetherness are not meal choices on the dinner menu. 

Everything about “Connor’s Wedding” is potent and yet subtle. Shiv, Roman and Kendall are all wearing black, somewhat inappropriate for a springtime celebration of love, but clairvoyant for an unexpected funeral. Logan's roaring, fiery speech standing on a box in the middle of the ATN newsroom to rally his troops, like a perverse, expletive-laden soliloquy out of Henry V, makes his imminent, sudden death even more improbable and stark. And the fact that we never actually see the heart attack, and that we hardly see Logan while he’s dying or even after his death is significant: this ferocious, merciless, brilliant, seemingly omnipotent father and titan of industry is reduced to an out-of-focus, partially naked body under a sheet on his private plane, flying in the liminal space over International waters, far from home. All his billions of dollars, and his political, societal and financial influence over friends, family and foes alike cannot save him from the human body’s fragility and the indignity of death—the great leveler of us all. 

Despite Logan’s cruelty, disloyalty and inability to feel and express love, we cannot help having sympathy for this mostly despicable man who dies not with his children—who love him in their own deficient, deeply compromised way—but with people who were bought and paid for with blood money to serve him and his corrupt businesses. And once he is merely a body, he has no more power over them. Their loyalty to him was based solely on fear, and when he’s dead, their fear dissipates instantly into cold calculation and self-preservation. 

How will the rest of the final season play out? We, Kendall, Connor, Shiv and Roman have no idea. How will we exist without the terrible, awesome father figure who dominated their lives and this show, about whom we care despite knowing better? We all have lost a worthy adversary: the man whose massive, tyrannical, back loomed center stage during the opening credits of each episode. We, like in the flashbacks of the Roy siblings as children, will always be turning our heads and looking for the epic, Shakespearean figure of Logan Roy, whose face we will never see again. 

Portrait of Postpartum Depression in ‘Fleishman Is in Trouble’ from The Bulwark 1/11/23

I was worried Fleishman Is in Trouble would not translate to television, that the FX/Hulu production would not match the 2019 novel’s humor, insight and compassion. But Taffy Brodesser-Akner has done a masterful job adapting her own book, and the TV series actually increased the story’s power for me. What struck me—after the brilliance of the acting, writing and direction—was how acutely I felt the depiction of Rachel Fleishman’s postpartum breakdown.

Because its portrayal was eerily similar to mine.

Rachel (Claire Danes) was raised by her remote, austere grandmother in Baltimore after her mother died when Rachel was almost too young to remember her. Although her mother had been Jewish, her grandmother sent Rachel to an all-girl, Catholic prep school where she felt excluded and friendless. Not just because of her religion, but because she was surrounded by girls who were born to wealth and privilege. Rachel bootstraps herself out of her humble circumstances, but the price she pays is that she depends only on herself and is very much alone. When she meets Toby Fleishman (Jesse Eisenberg) and then his effusive, tight-knit, observant Jewish family, she thinks she’s finally found the antidote to the gaping hole in her heart.

But pregnancy has other plans for her. Rachel is used to being in charge. She is independent and is unapologetically dominant in her job. Despite her intense desire for a family of her own, the lack of control inherent in lending your body to a creature growing inside you unsettles her. So is her new status as a sort of symbol rather than a person in her own right. She is passed over for a promotion, she’s tired all the time, and she can’t wear the stylish work clothes she’s used to. Even her beloved Toby treats her differently. Her formerly accepting, non-patriarchal husband acts as if she were a personal science experiment, telling her what she can and can’t eat for the health of their baby.

These first intimations of disorder in Rachel’s controlled adult life mutate into utter chaos after her daughter’s needlessly traumatic birth. While Toby is out of the delivery room for a moment dealing with coworkers, an unfamiliar and unconscionable OB-GYN breaks Rachel’s amniotic sac without her consent. In agony and feeling completely violated, she is forced to give birth sedated—strapped to and splayed on a gurney—by C-section. Suffering from PTSD and in so much psychic and physical pain, she has nothing left to give her new baby. Every day, she wears the same sweatpants, sweatshirt, and Uggs she wore when she left the hospital. She has no one to talk to during the day. Toby is doing rounds at his hospital. Her colleagues at work seem like they’re in a past life. The moms in her prenatal yoga group treat her depression as if it were contagious. She waits for the baby to sleep to have the freedom to weep uncontrollably on the floor of her bedroom, what she mordantly calls her “Me Time,” which is also the name of the episode.

Their pediatrician tells Rachel and Toby that their daughter might not be smiling yet because “Smiling is an imitative behavior,” implying Rachel’s turmoil is to blame. Toby suggests psychotherapy and Rachel responds, “I don’t need therapy! I need help with this baby!” So, they hire a nanny, Mona, and as soon as Mona takes their crying daughter out of Rachel’s arms and into hers, the baby starts cooing peacefully. “I have a calm energy,” Mona says.

After I watched both “Free Pass” and “Me Time”—the first of which tells the story from Toby’s perspective, the second Rachel’s—I was chilled. I felt my own experience with postpartum anxiety and depression mirrored back at me.

Like Rachel, I had a parent who died before I reached adulthood and my other parent was frequently remote and emotionally unavailable. I am Jewish but went to an all-girls prep school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan that was decidedly not. The Preppy Handbook was my Torah. I used my creativity and adaptation skills to blend in as best I could, but on a socio-economic level, I couldn’t compete. In Fleishman Is in Trouble, a friend describing Rachel says, “the lack of money and proximity created an outsider’s desperation in her. But also, sophistication is a language; you’re either born speaking it, or you’ll always speak it with an accent.” I had to pause and rewind twice.

Like Rachel, I experienced traumatic things at the beginning of my pregnancy. Though, unlike Rachel, I had a wonderful OB-GYN who was actually there for my delivery. She advised me because of my history I was likely to have some kind of postpartum reaction, but I felt so healthy, strong and happy during my second trimester that I willfully ignored her warning. I do remember saying to her as the due date approached, “It almost never happens you 100 percent know in advance that your life is going to change completely in a day, but having a baby is I guess the exception.”

And it was true, but not in the way I’d expected and hoped for. Like Rachel, I had a C-section, though mine was planned. My baby was upside-down and backwards. My doctors were skilled and sensitive, but I was still drugged up and arms akimbo on the operating table like Jesus on the cross. All I wanted to do was sleep. I felt a vague tugging and pressure, but giving birth was literally and figuratively an out-of-body experience for me. I heard my baby cry and my partner was crying also from happiness and I played along because I knew that’s what I should do. I felt no joy, I felt no excitement, I felt no curiosity, I just wanted to keep sleeping.

I was in so much pain. I wasn’t able to get my baby to latch properly for feedings and my son was losing weight. My partner was at work all day and even though I had a baby nurse, I always felt tired, lonely and scared. I couldn’t believe the hospital had let me leave when I was clearly incapable of taking care of this new life. I couldn’t figure out what was happening. I had wanted this baby. Desperately. I had always wanted one, but I wasn’t even sure I could get pregnant until I did accidentally.

So why wasn’t I happy? “You must be blissful,” well-meaning friends would say, and I’d nod and smile but inside I wanted to crumple up and disappear. I didn’t deserve this miracle. I could see he was cute, and he was an “easy” baby. He slept and ate well. His caregivers told me what a good boy he was. But other than going through the motions and doing my duty by him, I felt no real affection for the child I’d previously craved. I felt immensely guilty and ungrateful. I could hear my relatives’ thoughts: “But she has so much help! She can sleep whenever she wants. She can go take a walk, go have lunch with friends. What’s her problem?”

Worse than their judgments were my own. Anything they might criticize me for, I would multiply internally by five. Because every time I nursed my baby or held him, I looked into his eyes and thought the same thing Rachel Fleishman thought: “Rachel looked down and knew that the baby knew what she was thinking. She knew and would never forgive her.” I was single-handedly ruining my child with my total lack of maternal instinct. In my mind, this newborn was already smarter and more intuitive than I was in my late 30s. My grandmother, my mom, and now I had no idea how to be a Good Mother. And other than pining for my boyfriend to come home from work and relying heavily upon my baby nurse and then nanny, I told no one because of my deep shame. Who would be interested in the complaints of a selfish, unloving, and unlovable upper-middle class woman?

Thank goodness, another mom—who was just an acquaintance then but is a dear friend of mine now—recognized the signs of postpartum depression in my face and my disposition from her own experience, and told me where to go for help. With a lot of excellent therapy and the right medications, I got through the first difficult year somewhat intact. But Claire Danes’s portrayal of Rachel’s first breakdown was stunningly real and potent. Her past, her helplessness in the face of trauma, her inarticulate grief and pain she interprets as innate, generational brokenness, and Toby, who just wishes someone else would help “fix” Rachel and make her the woman she was before she had his baby, who is resentful of Rachel handing the kids off to the nanny so she can feel somewhat herself again, all rang painfully true for me.

Brodesser-Akner’s brilliance in portraying this experience from both sides, Toby’s and Rachel’s, is superlative. As much as Toby wants to be helpful, Rachel’s trauma is incomprehensible to anyone who hasn’t gone through it themselves, and it makes her feel like she is stranded on an unknown island with no rescue in sight. My greatest hope is that the show will help other mothers struggling from this awful syndrome understand that they are not alone and that there is help out there for them. Things do indeed get better. And much, much better, at that.

Fifteen years later, that baby I thought I had failed, the one I knew I’d ruined, is now a bright, funny, well-adjusted and well-loved teenager. He’s even happy, as far as teenagers can admit to being happy. Babies are much more flexible and resilient than we are led to believe in the “What to Expect” books. Despite their parents’ plentiful missteps, anxieties, and fumbling, my children, like the Fleishman children, are good, thoughtful, solid individuals well on their way to becoming (I hope) even more fully realized adults than the ones who are raising them.

The Case for ‘The Family Stone’ from The Bulwark, 12/23/2022

There is one egregious absence from nearly every “Best Christmas Movie” list I’ve seen: The Family Stone (2005). It’s everything anyone would want in a Christmas movie—warm, funny, and entertaining—but there is a subtle core of sadness that never crosses into being maudlin. The Family Stone does what it needs to do to qualify as a holiday movie, but it then transforms into something much more profound and satisfying.

On the surface, The Family Stone is a typical “golden child comes back to their hometown and to their loving but kooky family with inappropriate significant other and hijinks ensue” plotline, á la Meet the Parents. Everett Stone (Dermot Mulroney) brings his high-strung, high-achieving girlfriend, Meredith Morton (Sarah Jessica Parker) to meet his family with the intention of asking his mother, Sybil Stone (Diane Keaton) for her heirloom engagement ring so he can propose.

Meredith’s introduction to the Stone family is an utter disaster: she yells when she tries communicating with Everett’s deaf brother, Thad (Tyrone Giordano), even though he reads lips; during a game of charades, she unconsciously points to Thad’s husband Patrick (Brian J. White) when she is searching for the word “black”; and, trying to be helpful, she prepares a special Morton holiday dish with mushrooms, unaware that her intended fiancé is allergic to them. And, as the coup de grace, the more traditional Meredith attempts to discuss sexual politics with the decidedly bohemian Stones and steps directly onto a landmine, blowing up the cheer and goodwill of the Christmas Eve meal. She alienates herself entirely from everyone in the family.Except Ben (Luke Wilson), Everett’s older brother. For some reason, Ben—the free spirit foil to Everett’s controlled, bottled up businessman—is smitten with Meredith. He is her only ally against Sybil and his sister Amy (Rachel McAdams), who is Meredith’s ultimate mean girl. And when Meredith begs her sister Julie (Claire Danes) to come help reduce the tension, Julie’s presence does the exact opposite because Julie (literally and secretly) falls head over heels in love with Everett the moment he picks her up at the bus, and he with her. As does the rest of the Stone family, much to Meredith’s horror. Shakespearean misunderstandings and misadventures ensue, and—technically—in the end, it’s Happily Ever After.

disastrous charades

Ben to the rescue

Or is it? As the story progresses, we, and the rest of the family, learn that Sybil has what is likely terminal cancer. She was determined to keep it a secret from her family so they could have one, last, uncomplicated Christmas together, but one by one, they find out. Somehow, despite the heaviness of the topic, writer-director Thomas Bezucha handles it with enormous grace and delicacy. Sybil’s uncertain future fills his movie with depth, meaning, and longing that are entirely absent in other treacly Christmas movies. (I’m looking directly at you, Love Actually.) We genuinely feel the family’s love for their eccentric, strong, sometimes difficult matriarch, and the love returned to them by her. We admire her wish to handle her illness with dignity and privacy, and to have her wishes observed with respect.

There is a beautiful montage midway through the movie. It’s almost Christmas. Most of the Stone house is in bed or has fled the house to look for an errant Meredith or, in Meredith and Ben’s case, in search of distraction. Kelly Stone (Craig T. Nelson) kisses his pregnant eldest daughter, Susannah (Elizabeth Reaser) goodnight. Meet Me in St. Louis is muted on TV as she talks to her husband on the phone. Amy is sleeping peacefully on her lap. After her dad goes upstairs, Susannah unmutes the movie in time for Judy Garland singing “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” which is one of the most beautiful, bittersweet songs and scenes in movie history. It’s full of yearning, sadness, love, hope, and an acknowledgement that nothing stays the same, as much as we wish it could.

Upstairs, Kelly puts his head on Sybil’s chest and they have a brief conversation about Everett marrying Meredith:

Sybil: “You know, honey, It’s not her. I feel sorry for her. I do. It’s just that he’s making this mistake. . . . And I won’t be here. I only want him to be happy.”

Kelly looks her deep in the eyes and says, “He’ll be fine. . . . We all will . . . no matter what. You’ll see.”

And then Sybil finally lets her brave and stoic façade crumble: “Kelly, Kelly, I’m scared.”

As the song swells, Susannah watches the TV and her eyes well up with tears, and we know without it having been said explicitly that she is aware of her mom’s fate. Patrick and Thad take a walk through a snow-covered, silent town. Lying in bed at the inn, Julie tries to read but is distracted, thinking about Everett. Everett looks at his engagement ring and tries to call Meredith, while Meredith and Ben are asleep in each other’s arms in his car. And Kelly and Sybil make love. She opens her blouse to reveal her mastectomy scar, and Kelly caresses it.

This isn’t usual Christmas Movie fare. And I fear I’m making it sound much more heavy-handed than it actually is. Bezucha directs all of this with the lightest hand possible and the fact that he pulls it off is a minor miracle. The Family Stone is neither a confection nor a leaden Christmas pudding. It’s a delicious, savory soufflé that needs to be baked at the perfect temperature and taken out of the oven at the exact time or it will fall flat. There are fewer tears and hugs than there are laughs and fun misadventures. It is clever, lighthearted, and human, above all. Even though The Family Stone came out in 2005, it feels timeless (save for all the flip phones).

The cast is perfection. They all, from starring parts to featured players, are at their best. For example, Elizabeth Reaser, who has a relatively small part (and what, in lesser hands, could be a thankless one as the “nice” sister), is subtle and warm and an absolute wonder. She makes me well up in tears just like she does every time I watch her watch Judy Garland in that pivotal scene, without her saying a word.

Bezucha has a delicate, tasteful, and compassionate touch. There are plenty of true laugh-out-loud slapstick moments in The Family Stone, but he also tackles sexual acceptance, non-religious spirituality, equality, love, and death head on. All wrapped up in a shiny red bow for Christmas.

The Renewed Relevance of ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ from The Bulwark, 10/31/2022

Even though Rosemary’s Baby premiered in 1968, Roman Polanski’s masterpiece is frighteningly relevant today following the Supreme Court striking down Roe v. Wade this year. Rosemary Woodhouse (Mia Farrow)’s fate—like many pregnant women then, before, and presently—is at the mercy of those who see her womb solely as a vessel for their own ambitions. And as much as she fights for her bodily autonomy, she is ultimately powerless against the dark forces that want to control her and the baby inside her.

The first time we see Rosemary, she and her actor husband are meeting a real estate agent outside “The Bramford,” an imposing gothic building on Central park West in New York City. She wears a pristine white dress and is full of guileless, childlike wonder about the vast, tenebrous apartment. She is enraptured by the myriad improvements she would make, like a little girl peering into a store window at a beautiful dollhouse, despite the fact that the woman who previously owned the apartment died suddenly under highly suspicious circumstances.

Her husband, Guy (John Cassavetes), is decidedly less effusive. In contrast to Rosemary’s openness and innocence, Polanski establishes who Guy is immediately: cynical, selfish, and aggrieved. In other words, a typical actor. When the real estate agent asks Guy what he might have seen him in, Guy’s response makes clear that although he’s doing TV and commercials he’s not where he wants to be in his career; these jobs, in his opinion, are far beneath him.

Cassevetes and Polanski have no interest in making Guy likable. Guy is charming, but he’s also crude and egotistical, cracking inappropriate jokes and slapping Rosemary on the ass when the real estate agent isn’t looking. He dominates her, and there is little tenderness between them. He treats her as if she’s a pretty thing he owns—a pampered and silly kid. Rosemary laughs off and plays into his treatment of her. She wears babydoll dresses with Peter Pan collars and even walks with the gait of a child. She is perceptive, capable, and organized, but she subsumes herself into Guy’s moods and needs, sublimating her own.

When Guy walks through the door, dejected and sulky because he lost a lead theater role to another actor, Rosemary runs into the kitchen to make him a sandwich and pour him a beer. She tells him their elderly neighbors, the Castevets —whose young houseguest, Terry, jumped out their window and killed herself directly outside the Bramford two days earlier—invited them to dinner that night and she accepted because they’re grieving. Guy sulks but eventually agrees to accompany her.

Guy’s mood improves significantly when dinner conversation turns to him and his career. Over a meal Rosemary can barely eat, Roman compliments Guy’s acting: “You have a most interesting inner quality, Guy. It should take you a long way indeed, provided of course that you get those initial breaks.” Guy is flattered and energized by Roman’s praise. Other than pointedly insulting the Pope and her religion, Guy, Roman, and Minnie leave Rosemary out of the conversation entirely. The only thing Minnie seems to care about is how many kids she wants to have.The next day, Guy is offered the dream job he lost out on—the original actor who booked it has suddenly gone blind. Later, Rosemary tells her friend Hutch (Maurice Evans) that Guy has been inundated with other job offers after the play’s run. She makes excuses for his inattention and self-absorption but is clearly upset and lonely.

When she returns home, her apartment is filled with red roses. Guy apologizes profusely for his self-absorption and then abruptly says, “Let’s have a baby. Alright?” He’s even circled the dates to try on a calendar. Rosemary is overjoyed at his sudden attention. In the background, we hear the slow drip, drip, drip of a leaky kitchen faucet.

The newlyweds settle in for a romantic first night of baby-making. “Here goes nothing!” Guy declares. Rosemary is wearing a long, blood-red pantsuit as they sit by a fire. Minnie rings their doorbell but to Rosemary’s great relief Guy intercepts her and she doesn’t interrupt their evening. He comes back into the living room with chocolate mousse Minnie has prepared for them. Rosemary dislikes its chalky undertaste. Guy orders her to finish it. Rosemary is baffled by Guy’s anger but she gives in and has a few more bites.

Minutes later, she feels violently dizzy. She falls over and Guy carries her into the bedroom.

Rosemary has a nightmare. She is floating on a mattress in the ocean. Then she’s on a yacht, a cocktail party in progress but the other people on the boat aren’t in focus. The captain is charting a mysterious course. The captain turns into Hutch, looking at Rosemary with concern and sadness. He’s kicked off the boat with his maps and charts, warning of a typhoon. Guy strips Rosemary of her clothes, leaving her naked. She is below deck on a bare mattress. Covered in scaffolding is the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. A ram’s skull replaces her vision of The Hand of God. Her elderly neighbors and Guy, who are also naked, gather round the bed in shadows. Guy insists that Rosemary is conscious and Minnie, in a deeper and sterner voice than we’ve previously heard, admonishes Guy that the chocolate mousse has rendered Rosemary “practically dead.” They chant, they mark Rosemary’s stomach with lines and numbers in blood and we see a black talon run its long, pointed fingers down her belly. Rosemary sees its red, burning eyes staring into hers. She screams, “This is no dream! This is really happening!”

A month later, Rosemary is pregnant.

Roman Polanski, despite his extremely complicated relationship with women in his personal life, advocates for women in Rosemary’s Baby. Every man in Rosemary’s orbit, save the unfortunate Hutch, betrays her. “Guy” seems to be deliberately a generic name representing all men. It may be 2022, but we might as well be in 1968. The male authority figures use her and her body as a pawn. Her uterus is not her own, it is merely a receptacle. When Rosemary worries the intense pains she’s having might be an ectopic pregnancy, Dr. Sapperstein admonishes her: “‘Ectopic?’ I thought I told you not to read books, Rosemary.” Everyone dismisses her first-trimester agony. They tell her it’s perfectly normal to feel and look like you’re dying.

The only man in her life who cares about her—the avuncular Hutch—is disposed of efficiently by Guy and Roman as soon as they realize he is undermining their dark plans for Rosemary.

Even Dr. Hill, the doctor Rosemary’s friend suggested, fails her in the end, writing off her desperation to save herself and her baby as prepartum hysteria and delivering her back into the clutches of the coven. In fact, both the good and evil doctors are brusque and condescending. As if women’s concerns are an annoyance, rather than fundamental to their job.

And most egregiously, Guy, the man who should love and care about Rosemary the most, literally sells her body and his soul to the Devil for a job. Yes, Minnie and Roman Castavet are the conduits to Satan, but without Guy’s enthusiastic help their Satanic plot would never come to fruition. Minnie can smell vulnerability, and she sees Rosemary’s trusting nature as pliable and Guy’s fragile ego as his fatal flaw: They are the perfect marks. In a sublime indictment of Hollywood, Guy’s initial dream of living at The Bramford so he can be walking distance to the theater transforms at the end of the movie into booking a TV or film job and moving to a mansion in Beverly Hills. Honestly, I know some actors who would make the same deal with the Devil if given the choice.

Having been pregnant twice, I can tell you that it is a bizarre experience. I was not carrying Satan’s spawn—although with my now teenage son, it sometimes feels that way—and I was overjoyed both times. But my body was not my own. I was exhausted, my body stretched to seemingly impossible limits, I was literally weighted down with the enormous responsibility. Everything I did had the potential to harm my babies. Don’t eat soft cheese! No deli meat! Eat fish to grow the baby’s brain, but not too much fish or you’ll poison the baby! Do exercises but too much exercise or you’ll go into premature labor! Don’t drink anything or your baby might have fetal alcohol syndrome!

As an actor, being pregnant meant I was unemployable, as if I had a disability. It was impossible to separate myself as a person from my identity as a pregnant woman. It was like my pre-pregnant self was invisible. Strangers all of a sudden had the right to comment on my growing belly and to touch it without asking permission. My in-laws treated me with more reverence once they knew I had male babies who would carry on their family name. I felt guilty about having any doubts about my future duties and how I would be expected to behave once the baby was outside of my body. Even when I went to an Animal Collective concert, some attendees looked at me like I was a buzzkill, a sober reminder of maturity and duty they were trying to stave off for a few hours. I was still me, but in other people’s eyes, I had disappeared into my role as a symbol.

And I had the benefit of advanced medical technology. Imagine being pregnant in 1968 before amniocentesis, before ultrasound, before sonogram photos! Even with those advantages, carrying a baby was vaguely ominous. How did I know I was going to love this stranger inside me? The one who was waking me up at night, making me nauseous, kicking me and rolling around my belly like a ghostly anaconda. The idea of this creature emerging from my body, then people demanding, “Here is a complete stranger. You are now expected to love it more than anything in the world and utterly devote yourself to it for the rest of your life,” was overwhelming.

And even more importantly, imagine not having the choice of whether you wanted/were able to have this baby? The overturning of Roe v. Wade has grabbed one of the most important decisions out of the hands of women and put it into the hands of politicians, usually male. Rosemary’s peril in 1968 is now many of ours. We viscerally feel her terror and legitimate paranoia that dark forces are out to get her. Throughout Rosemary’s Baby,Rosemary is in suffocating locations. We rarely see her outside. The Castevet’s apartment and both doctors’ offices are windowless. The Bramford itself (except for Rosemary’s apartment that she renovated herself in cheerful yellows and whites) is claustrophobic. Having spent some time in the real “Bramford” (the Dakota) as a child, I can tell you that its foreboding depiction is accurate. Even when Rosemary attempts to run away from the coven, she encases herself in a telephone booth while an imposing figure of a man who may or may not be malevolent waits for her outside.

Rosemary’s baby is a graphic, symbolic depiction of what women again face regarding their unwanted or dangerous pregnancies: Her baby is the product of rape, supernatural though it may be, and she is reduced to a symbol, a dark and twisted Madonna. The life of the mother is devalued to the point of inconsequence. As is the baby once it comes out of her womb. We are just a token to the people who want to control our bodies and make us pawns in their political and societal plans. It doesn’t matter if we can afford to raise a kid properly, or if our life is in peril. In fact, that is the point: to keep us disenfranchised, to make us powerless. Just like Rosemary. The disembodied lullaby Rosemary sings throughout the movie is ominous, mournful and discordant, and actually ushers in a terrifying nightmare.

‘Belle de Jour,’ an Un-Erotic Masterpiece, from The Bulwark, 03/30/2022

One of the only productive things I did over the last couple years of isolation was watching movies—specifically older, influential, “important” ones I am intimidated by (a truly silly notion since they’re not going to insult my children or say my house is messy). I consumed multiple Godard, Truffaut, Kubrick, and Fellini movies in HBO Max’s wonderful film catalog with gusto. Which is how the algorithm delivered me to Luis Buñuel’s Belle de Jour.

I’d heard that Belle de Jour (1967) was an erotic masterpiece. After watching it three times, I only halfway agree. It is absolutely a masterpiece, but it is not erotic. Belle de Jour’s producers, Raymond and Robert Hakim, were famous for making sexually suggestive films. They approached Luis Buñuel to adapt and direct the movie based on the novel by Joseph Kessel, but Buñuel agreed only if he were given complete creative control. The result is a sublime tragi-comedy and an indictment of the bourgeoisie. But it is definitely not titillating.

Belle de Jour is about a beautiful, aristocratic young woman, Séverine Serizy (Catherine Deneuve) who won’t consummate her marriage to her impossibly handsome doctor husband, Pierre (Jean Sorel). Instead, she has dreams of total sexual degradation at the hands of Pierre and other men. After hearing about another wife in her social circle who is secretly working as a prostitute, Séverine becomes obsessed with the idea for herself. Husson (Michel Piccoli), a distasteful and mysterious acquaintance, drops the name and address of a brothel he used to frequent. Séverine leaves her tony eighth arrondissementapartment to search for the brothel in a distinctly proletariat section of Paris. After a tentative start, she begins working there in the afternoons. The madam, Anaïs (Geneviève Page) gives her the alias “Belle de Jour” (“beauty of the day”) since she can only work afternoons while her husband is at the hospital. Thus begins her double life: the perfect, if chilly, bourgeois wife to Pierre at night; the blooming, liberated woman Séverine becomes during the day at Madame Anaïs’s whorehouse.

There is no actual sex in Belle de Jour. There isn’t even any real nudity. Séverine’s fantasies aren’t alluring. They’re unsettling and repellent, revealing a woman with an unhealthy, bifurcated spirit: horrifying daydreams that nonetheless thrill her (and that she doesn’t fully disclose to her husband), contrast with her waking life of idle, meaningless beauty and boring consumerism.

The undercurrent of absurdist—and sometimes even slapstick—humor further keeps audiences off balance. Madame Anaïs’s client, “the Professor,” dresses up like a bellhop and becomes angry Séverine doesn’t immediately understand the masochistic roleplay he desires. The butler of a mysterious (and no doubt imaginary) duke wears sunglasses even though he’s indoors and has a querulous relationship with the nobleman, as if they were an old married couple rather than servant and master. Both the Professor and the butler seem like characters out of a sex farce rather than an erotic drama.

Séverine’s fantasies typically involve cats. When rough-looking footmen have their way with her at Pierre’s insistence, she screams, “Don’t let the cats out!” There are the cows with cowbells “named after cats,” whose cow pies Pierre and Husson throw at her as she is tied to a stake. The Duke, before he proposes their tryst, tells Séverine, “I had a cat named Belle de l’Ombre (beauty of the shadows),” a play on her professional name and allusion to his particular morbid kink. As she lies naked but for a black veil in the coffin, The sounds of fighting cats—or, possibly, cats having sex—screech in the background. The butler asks, “Shall I let in the cats?” and the Duke hisses back, “To hell with your damn cats!” Even after majoring in English in college, I cannot figure out the symbolism of invisible wailing cats. The only thing I feel certain about is that Buñuel intends the juxtaposition to be darkly funny.

one of Sévérine’s “fantasies”

I’m going to change tone dramatically: In the many articles and reviews I’ve read in preparation to write about Belle de Jour, none mentioned Séverine was molested as a child. Well, one male writer did, but he said it was “a distraction.” Her sexual assault is intrinsic to the film and it is yet another reason I cannot think of this movie as erotic. It’s common for those who have experienced sexual trauma as children to repress and disassociate from their sexuality. This is why Séverine cannot be intimate with her husband except in fantasies where he is punishing and degrading her. She has been frozen in time psychologically to the age when the molestation occurred.

After her friend tells her in a taxi ride about someone they both know who is turning tricks, Séverine is in a daze. She looks lost as she climbs out of a taxi, her arms full of luxury items from a shopping spree. Back in her apartment, she breaks a vase of red roses Husson had sent to her. In her boudoir, she accidentally knocks over an expensive bottle of perfume and it smashes to the floor. “What’s the matter with me today?” she asks in distress. Immediately afterward we see a middle-aged man encircling and kissing a young girl in a refined parlor room. He looks much like the taxi driver who has just told Séverine about his experience driving men to secret Parisian whorehouses. Her mother’s voice offscreen yells, “Séverine! Come quickly! Are you coming or not?” The scene is brief, but it is indelible and disturbing. Young Séverine is in knee socks and a school beret. She can’t be more than 12, the age when a girl is beginning to discover her sexuality. The man in dirty blue work coveralls is working class in her parents’ employ. Her eyes are closed. We don’t know if this scene has happened many times or just once, and we also don’t know if Séverine is scared, confused or excited. And how can she know? She’s just a little girl.

Wrestling with whether to work for Anaïs or not, Séverine sits on a bench in an elegant park and watches schoolgirls happily and innocently jump rope. In a later scene, one of her Johns comes on to the teenage daughter of the brothel’s housekeeper—in knee socks and school beret—echoing Séverine’s adolescent trauma. The duke, as she cosplays his dead daughter, says, “I hope you have pardoned me. It wasn’t my fault. I loved you too much.” Séverine is beholden to her dark scars. And she thinks the abuse is her fault. She represses her feelings except in salacious daydreams. It is why she is both attracted and repulsed by Husson’s lasciviousness, why she wants to be dominated by anonymous strangers, men who are frequently repellant and not of her social milieu.

The tension between her bourgeois upbringing and her secret desires are what attract her to the dangerous, reckless criminal, Marcel (Pierre Clémenti, in an incredible performance). Marcel is all animal instinct. Feral, in fact. He is tall and rail thin, has fake gold teeth, and is a flamboyant dandy: long, leather coat, velvet suit, hip-slung belt, shiny buckled boots and a walking stick. As if Lord Byron were a petty thief. He has cheekbones that could cut glass and a stare that sees right through Séverine’s fake placidity. He stalks around her, examining her up and down as if she were a prize breeding mare. He is cruel on purpose, testing to see how she will react. There is a strange, savage elegance to him. He moves like a dancer. He is undeniably alluring. And his arrogance is a front for his vast insecurity and vulnerability, a feeling of being alone and adrift in the world.

Again, we never see Marcel and Séverine have sex, but Buñuel does have a closeup of his legs on top of hers. Her patent leather, Yves St. Laurent shoes beneath his feet as he pushes off his patent leather boots and reveals dirty socks with holes underneath.

Buñuel and his co-writer, Jean-Claude Carrière, paint Séverine and Marcel’s daytime trysts as more than just sexual. They are oddly romantic. He loves her in his own treacherous way. And she refuses to charge him for sex even before they’ve had it; afterwards, her hands tremble. “You scare me,” she says. Marcel is the antithesis of selfless, harmless, Ken-doll-good-looking Pierre, and that’s what Séverine can’t resist. Marcel is the dark, lowlife Romeo to her Juliet. We understand why they are tragically drawn to each other. They have genuine chemistry. But Séverine knows their pairing is unhealthy and unholy. She says to Husson, when he discovers her at the brothel, “I’m lost. I know I’ll have to answer for it one day. But I couldn’t live without it.”

Pierre Clémanti and Catherine Deneuve

And of course, Séverine is right. Marcel’s obsession with her culminates in the attempted assassination of Pierre, paralyzing him, blinding him, and rendering him mute. The police then kill Marcel. Cut off from both her light and dark lovers, she becomes a chaste, dutiful wife again. In her black A-line dress and pious white collar (dressed like a “precocious schoolgirl,” as Husson taunts), she feeds her husband medicine while he sits immobile in a wheelchair, dark sunglasses covering his unseeing eyes. She finally feels whole. She’s expiating her guilt by serving him for the rest of their sexless lives. “Ever since your accident, my dreams have stopped,” she tells him. This is her warped version of Happily Ever After.

Until, that is, Husson comes to see Pierre to tell him about Séverine’s double life. He claims it’s so Pierre doesn’t feel like a burden to the perfect wife he assumed he had married. But it’s truly to punish Séverine. Husson is merely a sadist. He has become the real life torturer he was in her fantasy when he threw cow shit on her and called her a slut.

As the clock chimes five—the hour she used to return home from the brothel—she re-enters the living room where Pierre sits in helpless misery, tears running down his cheeks. She sinks back into the couch. All of a sudden she hears the cow bells again. Pierre takes off his glasses, smiles at her, and rises out of his wheelchair. The cats screech. He and Séverine toast each other, they hug, they chat about where they might go on vacation. And then we hear the horse-bells. Séverine walks out onto her Parisian balcony, and all of a sudden she is back in the country where the first scene took place, the black horse and carriage with the gangster-footmen riding beneath her.

What is real and what is fantasy? Has she divided once again? At what point do Séverine’s masochistic daydreams become her real life? Was the whole movie in her head? Did any of it really happen? Is Séverine a living person or is she a symbol? Is she a victim, a heroine, or a villain? Rather than a tale of eroticism, Luis Buñuel and Jean-Claude Carrière intend Belle de Jour to be a fable without a moral, a dark fairy tale, a pitch-black Cinderella: Anaïs (or maybe Husson) as a perverse fairy godmother, two handsome princes and even a horse-drawn carriage. Depending on which interpretation we want to cling to, either Pierre’s tears release him from an evil spell or Séverine escapes the misery of her guilt by falling deep into fantasy (and maybe madness) once again.

And so we end as we began: the horse and carriage and footmen driving in the countryside, either a new beginning, or an endless loop of a nightmare.

‘The Sentinel’ at 45: Terribly scary, with emphasis on "Terribly," Bulwark, 1/11/2022

Okay, I’m not going to pretend that The Sentinel (1977) is one of my favorite horror movies. The Sentinel, which was released 45 years ago this week, is actually pretty bad. Some might argue that it’s terrible. But what I will say is that it’s definitely not boring. And when I was a kid, the commercial for it scared the shitout of me so it holds a special horrific fondness in my heart.

Written and directed by Michael Winner, The Sentinel is about a beautiful but troubled model, Alison (Cristina Raines), who moves into a massive brownstone apartment in Brooklyn Heights so she can have some independence from her controlling boyfriend, Michael (Chris Sarandon), as she’s deciding whether to marry him. The building itself is in perfect condition with grand paintings hanging in the hallways, and the gigantic apartment comes fully furnished and decorated like an upscale funeral parlor. While I would be completely creeped out by its design, Alison is charmed. Her chilly, busybody realtor, Ava Gardner, tells Alison the rent is $500. Alison says “Oh I’m afraid that’s a bit too much.” (!) So Gardner immediately lowers it to $400. Find me a New Yorker who wouldn’t live in a mausoleum for $400.

The only issue that gives Alison pause is that on the top floor there is a man in religious robes constantly staring out the window. “There’s someone staring at me from the fifth floor,” Alison says. “That’s Father Halliran,” Gardner explains. “He’s a priest. He’s kind of senile. He sits by the window. He’s blind.” Alison responds, “Blind? Well then what does he look at?” A very valid question, in my opinion.

Of course, according to the classic trope of horror movies, strange occurrences begin happening immediately after Alison moves in. She meets her eccentric—to say the least—neighbors (including Burgess Meredith and Sylvia Miles, among other cinematic luminaries) who are suffocatingly and relentlessly friendly and enthusiastic. She hears heavy footsteps walking above her at night. Lights flicker and chandeliers swing as she tries to sleep in her sexy lingerie. She experiences migraines, insomnia, and fainting spells, and it starts affecting her supermodel career. (Relatable.)

When Alison contacts the real estate broker, she tells her nobody has lived in the building save Alison and the blind priest for at least three years. (Dum, dum, DUMMM!) Too-long-story-short, this priest, (John Carradine) guards over the gates of Hell, the bizarre neighbors are ghosts of deceased homicidal maniacs who are also Satan’s minions (impressive multitasking), and Alison is a damsel in distress and is in for a devil of a time. As one might expect from a film by the director of Death Wish, New York City is a rough place and it ain’t for everyone.

It’s hard being a supermodel with a Devil of a migraine

There are a few things that make this truly demented movie remarkable. The lineup of famous 1970s faces is bonkers: Josê Ferrer, Martin Balsam, Arthur Kennedy, and Eli Wallach costar; Christopher Walken, Jerry Orbach, and Jeff Goldblum have bit parts. Uncredited actors include Charles Kimborough (“hospital doctor”), Richard Dreyfuss (“man on the street”), and Tom Berenger (“man at the end”). Notably, Beverly D’Angelo plays a mute reanimated murderer, but who dresses solely in red leotards and makes her presence known by simulating masturbation in front of Alison when Sylvia Miles invites her over for some neighborly tea (again, relatable).

Most remarkably, Michael Winner cast the other denizens of Hell with people who were sideshow performers (or from hospitals) who had significant physical deformities. According to Edgar Wright in “Trailers from Hell,” Winner instructed the crew to eat with them at lunch, “because they were ‘real people too,’ but he himself decided not to eat with them because he found them to be disgusting.” (If this essay can’t convince you to watch The Sentinel, available for rental on the VOD platform of your choice, Wright’s amused enthusiasm for this “rather unpleasant, in parts” film that “has gotta be seen to be believed” will likely do the trick.)

An aside: a personal nostalgic joy for me about this movie is that one of my father’s best friends, Hank Garrett, plays an unscrupulous PI hired by Michael to investigate Alison’s claims of evil, supernatural occurrences. Hank has had a fascinating life. His birth name was Henry Greenberg Cohen Sandler Weinblatt (can you believe he’s a fellow member of the Tribe?). In order to defend himself growing up in a tough Harlem neighborhood, he started lifting weights and actually won the 1958 Junior Olympic Powerlifting competition. Then he became a professional wrestler under the moniker “The Minnesota Farm Boy,” a natural name for a Jew from Harlem who most likely had never even stepped foot in the Midwest. He then segued to being a Borscht Belt comedian and then an actor in TV and films, most notably playing cops and heavies (sometimes hard to tell the difference) in Columbo, Kojak, Dragnet, Serpico, Death Wish, and Three Days of the Condor. While he played tough guys on screen, Hank was a delightful and upbeat presence whenever he came over to our apartment with his wife, Aggie. He kibitzed with my dad and they told stories and old Jewish jokes to each other, and he was absolutely wonderful with me and my sister. I had no idea he was in The Sentinel until I watched it last year. When I was little and not allowed to see his film work (and I would have been horribly bored if I had been), I wouldn’t have believed the sweet and funny guy cracking jokes and playing Connect Four with us at our dining table was also the murderer who tried to kill Robert Redford in an epic and brutal fight on film.

None of the actors in The Sentinel are at the top of their game and poor, beautiful Cristina Raines is in completely over her head. The cinematography is lackluster and sometimes even amateurish. The sound is subpar. There are a preponderance of orgies. The movie seems like a poor man’s version of The Exorcist meets Rosemary’s Baby. The script is laughably bad in parts. For example, Winner clearly tried to channel Bette Davis’s banter in All About Eve for Ava Gardner except the dialogue comes out as camp rather than witty. When Gardner asks Alison where she’s from and Alison says “Baltimore”—although her accent seems more like Baltimore by way of Tampa—Ava Gardner practically growls at her, “from Baltimore…how…nice.” If you are confused as to why being from Baltimore is of any significance to the realtor, you have something in common with me. And Winner makes Ava Gardner utter what I consider to be an instant classic: “I find New Yorkers have no sense for anything except sex and money.” Once again, as someone born and bred in New York City: relatable.

However, there is a grittiness and a daring that pays off. Christina Raines’s acting inability actually makes her more sympathetic and vulnerable. She genuinely looks confused and lost. Michael Winner’s utter lack of taste and decorum create some genuinely frightening scenes. The unrelenting Catholic guilt mixed with truly demonic sexual perversion is disorienting and nightmarish. The ’70s camera angles and zoom shots are also discombobulating and give us a glimpse into Alison’s personal hell, so to speak. Freaks must have been a seminal movie for Michael Winner, except he made no attempt to portray his own physically challenged cast sympathetically. They are meant to be seen as grotesque and evil. Imagine the outrage if this movie were made now.

It is vulgar and sadistic, but it is also effective. The final scenes are ghastly and terrifying. Maybe that’s what I sensed when I was little and was scared stiff by the commercial. It infected me even without seeing the movie itself. And even though it was poorly received when it premiered, The Sentinel has now become a cult classic, hence the adoration from auteurs like Edgar Wright.

Let’s not forget that this movie does something all great pictures do: it provides a little bit of wish fulfillment. Four hundred dollars a month for a floor-through brownstone apartment on Montague Street right off the Brooklyn Promenade is an absolute steal even if it is the gateway to Hell.

The 1970s: A Down and Dirty Decade of Horror Filmmaking - from The Bulwark, 10/30/2021

I’ve been watching independent 1970s horror movies for professional reasons—and as fortune would have it after viewing many, for personal reasons as well. Being terrified is a good distraction from other, more reality-based anxieties: Switching off the ever-depressing cable news channels following the 2016 election and switching on Danny Boyle’s zombie opus 28 Days Later was oddly relieving. That flick was a throwback to the strange, gritty horror flicks of the 1970s, a number of which I’ve had to watch more than once given that my hands instinctively fly to my eyes when the scary stuff starts. But they’re a pleasure to watch: Compared to many modern horror movies, they are both more daring and inventive because of their directors’ vision and their lack of technological innovations that we now take for granted.

To be clear—my scope is narrow. I’m not going to talk about massive, popular blockbusters like The Exorcist, Jaws, or Carrie. I’m also not going to talk about the slasher films that also emerged during the ’70s, mostly because I have seen few and, frankly, don’t enjoy them. What I will be talking about are films we might today describe as “elevated” horror, a term unknown in that more innocent era. I am drawn to ’70s horror movies because of their deceptive simplicity and rawness.
et’s Scare Jessica to Death (1971), directed by John Hancock, begins with three hippies driving a hearse with a “love” sticker on its side onto a ferry in a rural town. The older locals are distinctly unfriendly to them. Jessica (Zohra Lampert), her husband Duncan (Barton Heyman), and their friend Woody (Kevin O’Connor), dismiss their inhospitality as small-town conservatism. While moving into the old Victorian house Duncan and Jessica have bought as a respite from life in New York City (where Jessica has just finished a stint in a mental hospital), they come upon a beautiful squatter, Emily (Mariclare Costello). Frightened at first, after proper introductions Jessica very kindly asks her to stay. Everything is kumbaya heaven: there is a sing-along, a seance, good food and good company. Soon afterward, however, things start to unravel in a terrifying way. The ethereally beautiful Emily might actually be a vampire.

Let’s Scare Jessica to Death’s cast is wonderful, particularly Zohra Lampert. It was director John Hancock’s first movie, and he gathered most of the cast from theater productions he had directed. This helps explain why it feels a bit like a play: There are only four main characters, and the he dialogue is focused and psychologically astute, exploring the stress between the status quo (in the form of past generations of vampires) and the era’s counterculture (our heroes) in this seemingly idyllic spot.

The budget was just $250,000, but its financial limitations make it special. There is one set: the house. For all I know, a friend lent John Hancock their country house for a month. I had never heard of anyone in the cast except for Zohra Lampert. The special effects are not that special: dummies floating in the lake; no fangs or that much blood, just slashes on townspeople’s necks and pallor on their transformed faces. At one point Jessica catches a “mole” and in a close-up we see it’s clearly a brown mouse. The actors look like they supplied their own wardrobe. Most of the lighting is ambient. With no air-conditioning in the old house, the cast’s faces often look sweaty. Zohra Lampert is gap-toothed and maybe a little too old to play a hippie. Barton Heyman is short and balding—not your typical leading man.

But the actors seem real. Duncan looks like a struggling musician. Woody looks like a handy, free-spirit. And Zohra Lampert glows with an inner goodness that makes you root for her. Her performance radiates nuance, empathy, and kindness, which makes it particularly tragic to see her optimism crumble in terror around her. In most of her scenes she is smiling through her pain and confusion. She tries to see the best in people, even if they turn out to be supernatural murderers.

Today, executives would recast Lampert with someone younger who has perfectly straight, dazzlingly white teeth. Duncan would be tall and handsome and have a full head of hair. Jessica’s matronly nightgown would be revealing lingerie. There would be jump-scares and gore and CGI. Lots, and lots, and lots of CGI. That brown mouse would’ve been a CGI mole, for sure.

It is tight and human and intimate. It’s a very simple story told in a straightforward, unfussy way. The editing by today’s standards is slow, Hancock lingering without cutting so the viewer can see each character’s body language in long shots. The sight of Emily’s lengthy fingernails sent a slight shiver down my spine. There are “day for night” scenes, and the sound is spotty. After Duncan becomes a vampire, the only difference is in his emotional stiffness and his pallor created solely by face powder.

But this lack of cinematic artifice isn’t distracting. In fact, it enhances the intimacy and pathos. These are real characters experiencing something extraordinary and horrific. Did vampires kill all her friends or did Jessica descend into madness and murder the people she loved the most? Let’s Scare Jessica to Death’s simplicity is its gift.

David Cronenberg’s THE BROOD

In David Cronenberg’s The Brood (1979), Frank (Art Hindle) has divorced his wife Nola (Samantha Eggar), who is under the care of a controversial psychiatrist, Hal Raglan (Oliver Reed). Hal practices “psychoplasmics,” a process that creates bizarre physical transformations but is supposed to affect some kind of catharsis in his patients. Frank believes his ex-wife has physically abused their daughter Candice during her visitations. Meanwhile inhuman, dwarf-like creatures terrorize and slaughter people close to Candice and Frank, like Candice’s grandmother, grandfather, and teacher. The murders seem to coincide with Nola’s therapy sessions. And there is a reason for that: These relentless killer-dwarves are literal outgrowths of Nola’s rage at the people in her life she considers her tormentors. The Brood is a terrifying meditation on parenthood, divorce, generational trauma and what happens when what used to be love transforms into hate.

Again, this isn’t a sumptuous, beautiful movie. It’s full of ’70s rawness. The Canadian winter light is harsh and flat with suffocating, endless snow. Every day is overcast. The picture quality is grainy. People don’t look their best in that angle of light and they’re not supposed to. Makeup is minimal. The only person who looks beautiful is Nola and this is used against her in the end, as if her beauty were another aspect of her sickness.

The warmth of Hal Raglan’s 1970s post-and-beam house in the middle of the woods is a huge contrast in style and feeling from the rest of the movie: all variations of brown and orange inside compared to the vast, sterile whiteness outside. When Hal lets Frank into his house dressed in a short robe and Oomphies slippers, the glow inside highlights the chill outside.

Several of the cast’s performances are clunky and stiff; Art Hindle is blandly and forgettably handsome, like a guest star on an episode of a B-list 1970s detective show, and his reaction to the inconceivable horror unfolding around him is almost nonplussed. But I feel it is on purpose. “Frank” is supposed to be a blank slate, a non-actor, someone who could be a stand-in for anyone. He is absorbed into the action, he doesn’t affect it. And Candice is supposed to be a lonely, strange child with a flat aspect. It’s not entirely surprising that the mom responsible for half of her DNA generates horrific creatures who resemble her.

If this movie were made now, those in charge would demand a more appealing child actor who would tug at our heartstrings. But sympathy isn’t the point. In fact, it’s theopposite of the point. Cronenberg’s genius is to present this movie “objectively,” with as few flourishes and the least warmth possible so that the grotesque horror of the situation stands out.

All the horrific dwarf-like creatures were real people underneath practical makeup by genius Rick Baker (American Werewolf in London, folks), adding a little extra creepy verisimilitude to the setting. Again, one can only imagine how lame the modern CGI iterations of these beings would be today.he most effective way I can differentiate 1970s independent horror movies from today’s is to compare the 1977 Suspiria with the 2018 Suspiria. Although I think both are engrossing, they couldn’t be more different in style, tone, pace, and story.

Dario Argento said Suspiria (1977) was his twisted version of Snow White, itself a pretty twisted story. Argento’s take concerns a young woman, Suzy Bannion (Jessica Harper), who comes to Germany (although the whole movie looks distinctly Italian) to study with the prestigious Tanz dance company. She arrives in a downpour to see one of the dance students running in terror away from the school; that student subsequently dies in the most mysterious and horrific way. Suzy is delighted and honored to be given free room and board until strange occurrences happen to her and her friends. She soon discovers that this company is run by a coven of witches, and her demise is part of their devious plan.

Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria (2018), other than being set at a German dance company (really in Germany) with the same character names (and a cameo appearance by Jessica Harper), is an entirely different sort of movie. Suzy Bannion arrives at Tanz with an already broken spirit, haunted by the dying breaths of her mother who called her “my curse.” She begs for a chance and is accepted into the company by the lead dance teacher, Madame Blanc (Tilda Swinton) even though she has no formal training. She soon becomes Blanc’s prize student: she chooses Suzy to be the lead dancer in a piece (that is really a ceremonial incantation) they will perform in public after the former lead, unbeknownst to the other dancers, dies gruesomely as the result of a spell.

As with most 1970s horror films, the original Suspiria is down and dirty at one and a half hours. Even though the 2018 version has more frenetic pacing, it is an hour longer than its predecessor. The editing in the modern version doesn’t linger on shots like the original—for example, the very odd and seemingly random scene in which Suzy and Sarah float in Tanz’s giant Roman indoor pool. It is “slow”; bizarre and unique.The original is almost entirely from Suzy’s perspective, just like Snow White is the main protagonist in her story. However, in the latter version, we shift perspectives between four main characters: Suzy; Madame Blanc; Suzy’s best friend, Sara; and an elderly psychiatrist who treated one of the dancers who disappeared. Because of this, the 2018 version is a psychologically richer film. But it’s also less fun.

Sometimes Argento’s Suspiria feels not just like Snow White, but also Alice in Wonderland. The bright primary colors, especially the geometric stained-glass dome that impales one of the dancer’s friends, remind me of playing cards. Argento’s DP used “imbibition Technicolor” to amp up the colors to unnatural brightness. He also used a special lens to stretch out the image to widescreen and then shrink the image vertically, which gives the interior shots a nightmarish, claustrophobic feel. To add to the artifice, he dubbed the actor’s voices or used ADR for the English-speaking cast so the dialogue sounds a little off. Suzy walks innocently into this coven of witches and we as the audience are discombobulated as well. The exterior of the Tanz building feels like a fake wooden facade because it was. The synthesizer music by Goblin repeats like a hypnotic spell throughout Suzy’s journey. It’s like an exaggerated heartbeat and is both spooky and absurd. Everything about this movie looks a bit off-kilter and ersatz; even the blood looks like bright, red paint. And of course, other than the choice of lenses and the film development process, almost every other nightmarish vision is made with practical effects and makeup. Most of the performances are almost camp. It is deliberately garish. The cinematography is stunning but also vulgar. The various dreadful ways the witches kill their victims are more like turning the pages of a brilliant and grotesque pop-up book than watching a film, but this story is more about style than pathos. We don’t know enough about the inner workings of anyone’s psyches to care too much about them. We go along on this fever dream of a journey. After killing the head witch, Elena Markos, which in turn kills the rest of the coven, Suzy runs from the imploding dance school into a downpour with a smile on her face, like all heroines in fairy tales, unscathed and untraumatized.

Although the 2018 Suspiria has its terrifying moments as well, it is mainly a feminist interpretation about guilt, trauma, politics, loss and destiny. Instead of being an innocent victim, Suzy is complicit. Madame Blanc is complex and conflicted, both a tormentor and a surrogate mother to the seemingly lost Suzy. She also ends up being a martyr. The elderly psychiatrist, also played by an uncredited Swinton, is torn apart by guilt. 1977 Berlin is similarly torn apart politically, East and West. Suzy’s best friend at the company, beautifully acted by Mia Goth, is entirely well-rounded and sympathetic so we actually care when the witches kill her. Death and loss loom over every moment, giving the movie a weight that doesn’t exist in the original. Thom Yorke’s score is a bit heavy-handed and doesn’t have the same bizarre hypnotic effect as Goblin’s. The drab colors (until the final dance performance and climax, which of course indulges in CGI effects aplenty) only add to the gloominess. And this version has absolutely no sense of humor. It’s a seriousmovie, doncha know! I thoroughly enjoyed it but it didn’t worm its way inside me like Argento’s did. It felt more like a psychodrama than a nightmare, and in that way it takes fewer chances and is actually more conservative than the 1977 picture. Dario Argento isn’t a fan of the modern version. Even though I think it’s accomplished and complex, I can understand his feelings: while Luca Guadagnino considers it a love letter to Dario Argento, Argento probably feels it’s a love letter to someone else sent to him by accident.

And now I will be a typical myopic actor. If I were lucky enough to have been offered a chance to be in either production, which would I prefer? And I will again engage in a typically actorish hedge by answering “both.” The 2018 Suspiria offers up more actual emotional depth, and I’d have the opportunity to work with great actors like Tilda Swinton. I mean, how could I possibly say no?

But being in the original 1977 Suspiria would be an absolute blast. Insane, but a blast. When I was younger I acted in many bizarre experimental theater productions off-off-off (etc.) Broadway. Three were in a rundown theater in SoHo (which has been renovated and is now a fancy theater in SoHo) that at the time had many seats cordoned off because they were broken. I didn’t even understand what I was saying most of the time, but acting in these plays was an adventure. The productions were absurdly low budget, and because of this we were forced to be extra tricky and inventive. And we were! Our director’s imagination and visual sense were extraordinary and once we were in front of an audience, no matter how small, they were enraptured and actually taught me the nonsense we were performing made sense. There was one scene where I played an angel teaching the Devil the hokey pokey and at the end I jumped on his back and rode offstage. I thought it was absurd and funny, which it was.

But over and over, the audience found it moving—I heard them react. And I realized that my angel was soothing that Devil. She was undaunted by his ferocity. He softened and let her love and help him. I was so grateful to that audience for teaching me that we were all in this experience together. And I think I would have a similar experience acting in the 1970s Suspiria. I’d have no idea what I was doing or what effect I’d have on the audience until I saw it together with them in a movie theater. They would instruct me about what I had done by their reactions. My job would be to submit to a mad-genius director like Dario Argento and trust his instincts. His bold, raw and surreal 1970s sensibilities would make his nightmare fairy tale my dream job.